Following the hardly earth-shattering but welcome news that the fourth-generation iPhone will feature a front-facing camera, there's some further hints as to the uses Apple has in mind for the camera in the iPhone OS 4 Beta 2 SDK, which was released last week. Video conferencing - possibly integrated with Apple's upcoming Game Center service - is, of course, on tap. Less welcome is the suggestion that video chatting will be supported over WiFi only, not over 3G data connections, and code snippets that indicate a device must be "registered" in order for video conferencing to be enabled.

MacRumors dug through files in the SDK distribution and turned up a number of interesting status and error messages, all discussing "video conferencing" and "video calls." The error messages describing how dropped calls and misaddressed conferences would be handled give the clearest picture yet of how Apple intends to support video communications on devices with the hardware to handle it. First, as the ACCOUNTNOTREGISTEREDMESSAGE string contains “This device has not been registered for video conferencing,” it appears that Apple will require a separate account - possibly with a service fee - to make use of the feature. And the "could not connect" and "disconnected" error strings contain only references to WiFi:

Code:

IMAVCHATCOULDNOTCONNECTNOREMOTEWIFI = “The video call could not connect because a remote Wi-Fi connection could not be established.”;
IMAVCHATDISCONNECTEDNOLOCAL_WIFI = “The video call disconnected because the local Wi-Fi connection was lost.”;

If Apple intended to support 3G calling, one would expect to see error strings for "no service" or "poor service." Looks like using video chat over 3G in iPhone 4.0 is going to require some clever workarounds.

Apple's recently-announced Game Center service will, however, apparently support some kind of video communication features, as there are a raft of IMAV identifiers used for various error strings such as:

An Apple analyst predicted last week that Apple would use video-enabled gaming to "create a compelling and very sticky subscription service." Ezra Gottheil, a senior analyst with Technology Business Research, said that he thought that Apple was going to go big with the new service: "They seem to be saying that there's more to the next quarter than the introduction of a new iPhone," he told Computerworld.

I think phone makers and phone software makers are screwed until all the 4G networks become nationwide, because there really isn't too many things left to do with smart phones anymore, unless they have a wifi-like connection such as WiMax. This is a good example.

3G simply doesn't have the bandwidth to support video chat without making too large a sacrifice in quality. They could offer it, but it would bog down the network and the quality would still be garbage. WiFi only is a much better solution. Video 'texting' would be much more practical, say with a 30 second per clip limitation. That'd be cool. Even a better way to send voice messages would welcome.

wow if they do not feature video conference phone calls this would suck major D*CK! if its only feature for the game services then I would have no use for it. other then then video calls while on wifi would be more understandable because then we could just use mywi to make the calls and ALSO this would reduce people trying to know where you are 24/7 by asking you to turn on the video call on command. so this is actually good because not everyone is always on wifi and not everyone knows how to jailbreak and run it with mywi.

Video 'texting' would be much more practical, say with a 30 second per clip limitation. That'd be cool. Even a better way to send voice messages would welcome.

That would be REALLY neat. I actually heard that some cell phone carriers are in the process of developing a brand-new "voice chat" feature, where you can actually speak to and listen to another person and have full conversations with them. It seems like it would be much faster, personal, and natural than texting or instant messaging, too! Absolutely revolutionary!

That would be REALLY neat. I actually heard that some cell phone carriers are in the process of developing a brand-new "voice chat" feature, where you can actually speak to and listen to another person and have full conversations with them. It seems like it would be much faster, personal, and natural than texting or instant messaging, too! Absolutely revolutionary!

Why does everyone act so surprised? Hasn't apple's trend always been give the people what they want little by little? Example.... Even though it was possible, they never enabled mms on iPhone 2g! Yes the technology is at apple's fingertips but they simply put it off to get more people to buy their new/upgraded product? This along with how many others mentioned before me that the AT&T 3G network doesn't seem to be able to handle this kind of bandwidth consumption. Yes it makes sense to allow it via WIFI only. A new feature is a new feature. Hell I wouldn't doubt it if they didn't include iChat functionality right away. Don't act so suprised peeps it's a different day same ol' **** at Apple!

Also @ MetallicaFan
Haven't you noticed that it really does all fall back on ATT? The iPhone's features revolve around the U.S. ATT ability to support it. Chances are if its not possible in the U.S. then they are not gonna make it usable for other countries?